


The Lovely Couple

by celli



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: First Time, M/M, Undercover Married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-05
Updated: 2012-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-28 23:57:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/313576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celli/pseuds/celli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm sure we'll make a lovely couple," Clint said, and forced a smile. "Honey."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lovely Couple

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to [](http://giddygeek.livejournal.com/profile)[**giddygeek**](http://giddygeek.livejournal.com/) for the beta and [](http://misspamela.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**misspamela**](http://misspamela.dreamwidth.org/) for the enthusiasm.

It was a pretty typical week - giant ants with helmets on Monday, Doombots on Wednesday, potential alien invasion all Thursday night - so by the time they dragged themselves in to the Friday morning staff meeting, the Avengers looked a little the worse for wear. Tony was nursing cracked ribs and mumbling about redesigning all his satellites (he had been disappointed, actually, when the aliens turned out to be magic). Steve's bruises had all healed, but his posture was a few degrees shy of military straightness. Natasha was pretending the Doombot burn across her cheek was nothing. Even Thor's hair looked a little limp.

Clint figured he and Coulson were in the best shape. Coulson had gotten in some shots when the ants got close to gaping onlookers, but otherwise had stayed out of sight and coordinated. Clint had spent most of his time up high, and his Doomburn was on his leg, hidden by his costume.

Which he figured was why Fury walked in, looked at all of them, and said, "Barton, Coulson, with me. The rest of you, go take a fucking nap or something. You look terrible."

"You're welcome for saving the world!" Tony shouted after him, but from the look on his face as Clint turned to leave, some kind of rest might be in his immediate future. After he redesigned the SETI network, or whatever.

***

Clint eyed Coulson as they sat in the world's most uncomfortable chairs (Fury probably special ordered them, why did military leaders always hate people?) and waited for Fury to do his thing.

"What do you know about the Kingpin?" Fury asked, opening a folder.

Clint blinked. "Um, big guy, likes money and killing people, hates Daredevil?"

Beside him, Coulson cleared his throat. "Real name Wilson Fisk. Runs just about every kind of illegal activity in and near Alphabet City since the gentrification of Hell's Kitchen. Only indicted once, got off on what was almost certainly jury tampering." He shot a look at Clint. "Hates Daredevil," he finished. Clint grinned at him.

“Fisk is trying to get a toehold in, shall we say, higher-class crime," Fury said. "Word is that he's started a high-stakes casino for rich assholes who can't be bothered to direct their limo drivers to Atlantic City. And he leaves the safety of Alphabet City to make regular appearances there. This is a chance to get our hands on him without calling out the National Guard."

"Interesting that SHEILD is doing this, sir," Coulson said in a tone that Clint recognized as neutral-hiding-disapproval. ("Interesting that you've chosen to run your drills inside, team. I hope Stark Enterprises will be fascinated enough by the results to replace the conference table.")

"Kingpin has a number of metahumans on the payroll, and if we cut off their funding, we're a step closer to cutting off their heads." That might have been metaphorical...or not. "Besides, I hate the fucker. Here's your covers."

"Our rich asshole covers?" Clint asked. "Because the real rich asshole on the team is--"

"Wounded, and also would accidentally blow up the place," Coulson said before Fury could even respond.

"Point," Clint said and went back to his folder. "Okay, we're - wait, what?"

"Sir," Coulson said, "these covers are--"

"Real people," Fury said. He was smirking, the asshole. "Conveniently out of town for the next few weeks. It's always easier to get real people in the door."

Clint met Coulson's eyes over a picture of two men who bore the faintest resemblance to them, locked in a passionate kiss in front of a courthouse. Coulson's face was neutral as always, and damn it, if he wasn't going to react neither was Clint.

"I'm sure we'll make a lovely couple," Clint said, and forced a smile. "Honey."

***

His costume was surprisingly not a tux, but a black suit cut ridiculously well to fit him and the three knife holsters he had insisted on. (The one on his thigh had an access problem, but he figured if he was in that much trouble, ripping a seam to get at it would be the least of his concerns.) He felt a little uncomfortable - black should be for backgrounding you, reducing your visibility and your interest to the outside world, but this suit might as well have "RICH DUDE HERE" painted on it in hot pink.

"Problems, Barton?"

Clint turned to see Coulson, who _was_ in a tux. Clint's throat went desert-dry. "Fancy," he managed, not quite looking Coulson in the eye.

Coulson looked him over, and Clint bit down hard on the part of his brain trying to read that as - Coulson was his boss, prepping for an op. "You ready for this?" he asked finally.

Fuck no, Clint thought, but he smirked at Coulson. "I figure, when in doubt, imitate Tony Stark."

"God save me," Coulson said. He tossed something in the air, and Clint had reached out to snag it before he registered the glint of gold. "Let's go, Tom."

The ring would make his bow grip uncomfortable, Clint thought absently as he slid it on. "Ready when you are, David."

***

Fisk's casino wasn't in a grungy basement or a dark warehouse. It was in the penthouse of a skyscraper not far from Stark Tower.

"Wow," Clint said, taking in the mirrored ceiling (surveillance system gold), the mahogany trim, the green felt tables, and the very very scantily dressed waitresses. " _Wow_."

Coulson's hand, which had been resting in the middle of Clint's back, slid around to his side. Clint flinched away from the hard pinch.

"Ow!" he said and accidentally-who-are-we-kidding-on-purpose brought his foot down hard on Coulson's. Coulson's lips didn't move, but Clint could swear he heart a grunt. He grinned and, in the spirit of teamwork, took Coulson's hand and linked their fingers together. The pressure of Coulson's hand made the ring feel even heavier against his finger.

They moved through the crowd easily, keeping most of their attention (seemingly) on each other while making polite with the other guests. Coulson took a glass of champagne, but Clint waved it off; Tom wasn't much of a drinker, and you needed to be dead sharp to handle a knife. The pin-sized cameras in their shirt buttons would analyze the guests, the staff, and the security, to add to the little information from Fury's tips and the two agents' own observations.

"No sign of him," Clint murmured after about an hour of circulating and a couple of rounds of roulette. (Losing SHIELD's money backed up their cover and hopefully didn't mean fewer new guns in the armory or anything.)

Coulson smiled, which was still throwing Clint for a loop every fucking time, and put his mouth right next to Clint's ear. "Probably for the best. We need more prep time before we can be confident about taking him out."

"We have to do this again?" Clint asked, forgetting entirely to watch his volume, and Coulson laughed. It might be in character, to cover Clint's slip, but it sounded pretty real, and Clint's reaction to it was pretty inappropriate. Clint beat it down and tried to smile.

"Don't want to be seen with me in public?" Coulson said lightly.

"You have no idea," Clint said, and when Coulson looked at him, eyes narrowed, Clint leaned over and kissed him.

Only someone inches from them would have noticed Coulson's hesitation, but he dove into the kiss like a good little undercover agent, one hand coming up to cup the back of Clint's neck. There were a few murmurs around them, but this was Manhattan high society. As long as they weren't making out with inanimate objects, nobody would raise an eyebrow.

Coulson broke the kiss and Clint's eyes, which had been humiliatingly drifting shut, popped back open. "Smooth," Coulson breathed against his lips, and if Clint's return smirk was a bit uneven, Coulson didn't say anything.

***

The nights were a haze of fancy suits, mirrored lights, and Coulson:

Coulson rattled the dice and looked over at Clint with a challenging smile. "Kiss for luck?"

Clint kept his eyes on Coulson's face as he pulled Coulson's hand to him and pressed his lips to the fingers curled around the dice. "Good luck, David," he murmured.

He and Coulson were still staring at each other when the cries of the onlookers announced the seven.

  
"Oh, he proposed to me," Clint told a lady with silver hair and enough jewelry to fund the next Iron Man suit. "We're lying in bed--" She shivered in delight. "The lights are low, there's soft music in the air. He puts his hand on mine and says--"

"Tom, don't be an idiot," Coulson said, coming up behind him.

The silver-haired lady laughed. Clint shrugged. "Paraphrased."

Coulson grabbed his hand and dragged him away. "Get away from the nice lady before I kill you."

"You romantic fool," Clint said.

  
Coulson held the dice out again. Clint bent his head to kiss it and deliberately flicked his tongue out at the web between Coulson's first two fingers. Coulson made a low sound in his throat.

  
"There's a bit of a lag in security response," Clint said into Coulson's ear from behind, wrapping his arms around him and resting his chin on Coulson's shoulder. "They're overconfident. They don't take rich people seriously."

"Neither do you," Coulson said. One hand covered Clint's joined ones. "I think they're idiots. Doesn't mean I won't chase them when they run."

  
"Hey," the croupier said. "Hey! You gotta throw the dice."

Clint flipped him off and kissed Coulson again.

***

After a week of gambling, mingling, and occasionally sucking face with Coulson, Clint was starting to develop some theories about this: Fury's informant was a double, and the Kingpin was lying low or even plotting something against them. Or they were flat wrong and Fisk wasn't involved at all. Or Fury was just fucking with him just to make him batshit.

"I think Fury's fucking with us just to make us batshit," he told Coulson as he climbed into yet another schmancy suit. They were keeping their day jobs, of course, beating back the usual army of darkness, and Clint had nearly fallen asleep in a tree that afternoon. It was incredibly boring surveillance and Tony had been bitching in his ear the whole time about something something circuitry something, but still.

Coulson couldn't be any fresher unless he had slept through the surveillance too (unlikely), but he just raised an eyebrow at Clint. "Bored of me already? This marriage doesn't stand a chance."

"Oh, fuck you too," Clint said, jamming his - Tom's - ring on his finger and heading for the door.

Coulson grabbed Clint's shoulder, forcing him to a stop, and Clint clenched his far hand into a fist, then made himself relax it. "Barton, if you can't do the job--"

"I can do the damn job," Clint said. "I'm fine." He kept his eyes focused on the tense line of Coulson's jaw.

"Then stop bitching and do it."

" _Fuck_ you," Clint said again, and the last bit of it was muffled as Coulson kissed him hard, with no pretense of gentleness or affection. Just a clash of mouths, and a bite at Clint's lower lip, before he pulled back and looked down at him. His expression was as neutral as always, but Clint was close enough to see the flush around his collar and hear his breath coming faster than usual.

"The mission's that way, Hawkeye," he said. Clint followed him out the door, carefully not thinking about anything.

***

Naturally, that was the night the Kingpin showed. Clint looked at him across the room. Fisk's bulk was covered by a designer suit that nearly hid the fact that he was much more muscle than fat. He had a walking stick that Clint knew could shoot lasers (he might not have believed that a few years ago, but since he'd nearly shot the actual god of thunder he was pretty much rolling with it) and probably had a few other toys on his person, not to mention the security force that had just tripled.

Coulson saw him too, and they both wandered their way over to one of the wide windows on the west side of the building. "Call them in," Coulson said softly into his comm, and there was a sudden flurry of activity that reminded Clint of how many people had had access to this channel all along. He figured either they were waiting til after the op was done to mock them, or they were scared of Coulson. Probably they were scared of Coulson. He shrugged it off for the moment.

"What do you think?" he asked, checking to make sure they were out of earshot. "I mean, look at him, being Big Man on Campus. Showing how he runs everything, has a hand in everything."

"Everything? Even security?"

Clint caught Coulson's eye and cracked a grin. "Let's see?"

Coulson nodded.

Clint grabbed Coulson by the back of the neck and kissed him once, hard. "For luck," he said. The he punched Coulson full in the face, not bothering to pull it at all.

Coulson fell back a step, wiped blood away from the scratch where Clint's ring had scored his cheek, and drove a fist into Clint's gut.

Fucking ow. Coulson had a fist like iron. Clint doubled over, fought for a breath, and lunged forward, tackling Coulson to the ground.

They wrestled until the security thugs grabbed at them - longer than they should have had to, Fisk really did have training issues - and were hauled to their feet.

"What's this?" rumbled a deep voice, and yes, those were fancy-ass shoes coming into Clint's view.

Clint looked up and grinned through the pain. "Lover's quarrel," he said, and he and Coulson dropped back to the ground as the whine of Iron Man's repulsors cut through the air.

The rest of the Avengers did most of the work. Clint hardly got to use his knives at all. He did look over at one point, while wrestling a scantily-clad waitress for _her_ knife, what the fuck, and caught Coulson actually smiling at him in between kicking the shit out of two guards.

***

The Avengers piled out of the Stark Tower elevators and headed into the locker rooms, loud and boisterous. _They_ hadn't been kicking ass by day and married to Coulson by night. Clint trailed behind, trying to work up the energy to act normal, but as he got to the door Coulson grabbed his arm and yanked him away.

"Where are you going?" Tony yelled after them. "Need some alone time? Working on your marr--mph!"

Clint suspected Steve had shut Tony up, because if Natasha had done it there would have been howls of pain.

Coulson's apartment - fucking shock - was actually a door off his office, a few small rooms tucked behind what Clint's mental blueprints guessed to be the SHIELD break room. Coulson shoved Clint in the door, kicked it shut behind him, and then just stared at him.

"Really?" Clint said. He jerked off his suit jacket and started on the buttons of his shirt. "We're just--"

"Yeah, we're _just_." Coulson's fingers were efficiently undoing his bow tie. Clint couldn't take his eyes off the flashes of skin that were being revealed. "Were you expecting candles? Barry White? Keeping our hands above the waist?"

"Now that would be a shame," Clint said, barely remembering to toe his shoes off before attacking his belt. "Because I have a world-class ass."

Coulson didn't respond, but his hands hesitated just a bit on his cummerbund.

Clint grinned so widely he kind of freaked himself out. He closed the distance to Coulson, grabbed the cummerbund out of his hand, and tossed it away. "Maybe just a little more foreplay?" he suggested, and kissed Coulson.

"Only a little," Coulson mumbled into his mouth. His hands skated under Clint's unbuttoned shirt, over his stomach and sides, and fastened on Clint's ass, hard. Clint made a noise that was perilously close to a moan and dragged Coulson even closer until he had one leg between Coulson's and one of Bruce's fucking microscopes couldn't have found space between them.

Coulson's mouth moved down Clint's jaw to the base of his neck. The sharp pain of the bite there, followed by the sweep of Coulson's tongue, pretty much turned off every higher function in Clint's brain. He swept his leg out and knocked Coulson off balance and went down after him in a controlled fall.

"Motherfucker," Coulson said, his voice hoarse.

"Fastest way to do this," Clint said, and straddled him.

He got both their pants off with very little help from Coulson, who was really just interested in getting his hands back on Clint's ass at the earliest opportunity.

"Told you it was world-class," he said, then hissed out a sharp breath as he got both their cocks in his grip.

"Hawkeye, your costume has been advertising that for months," Coulson said, sounding way too coherent for a man with his dick in someone else's hand.

"Asshole," Clint said, half groan, half-laugh, and put more of a twist into his stroke, noting how Coulson stiffened when he felt Clint's calluses.

"Bastard." Coulson jerked his hips up.

"Son of a bi- _itch_!" Clint's vision greyed out a little as he came; he barely had the motor control to finish Coulson off before he collapsed on top of him. They panted in rhythm for a few minutes.

Clint folded his arms on Coulson's chest and propped his chin on them. "Oh, David, that was _wonderful_ ," he sighed, and managed a credible flutter of his eyelashes.

Coulson actually laughed. He smacked Clint on the ass before shoving him off. "Yeah, nearly worth the report I'm going to have to file on how we destroyed two thousand-dollar suits." He grabbed the nearest shirt and wiped himself down.

"Nearly?" Clint stopped in the middle of pushing himself to his feet. " _Nearly_?"

That got him a grin. Coulson stood, raised an eyebrow at Clint, and walked away towards the bedroom. He had a pretty fine ass himself, Clint noted in passing, something he hadn't paid nearly enough attention to this time.

Still. "Nearly," he muttered. He narrowed his eyes and headed after Coulson. "I'll show you nearly."


End file.
